East
by Synbu
Summary: Trauma coupled with madness can move anyone...but for the Hero of Tristram, his horror is only beginning. ONE SHOT.


**_"Our hero grew more tormented every passing day. I remember he awoke many times--screaming in the night--always something about 'The East' ..."-_**

I don't know how long I've been carrying this...disease. It's been months- no, weeks- no...days, perhaps since I tore myself from that horrid labyrinth. That perverse and disgusting mockery of the noble people who built this monastery, where kings have gone mad, princes have become demonic vassals, where priests would lead a town's men to their mutilation...where Hell has poisoned the earth. It must have been days, because I remember the horrors of that hell hole as if they had only happened moments before.

Have they? Has it only been moments where my foolish brain pleads that it has been months? I can- I can smell it! My blood...it's everywhere...and-and Alyssa is dead! She's dead, never to shoot another arrow from that worn yew bow that she always carries over her right shoulder...carried, not carries now. Her poor body- riddled with stray arrows and blackened to near rot from those bastard acid beasts, blood seeping from the gigantic hole in her chest where her organs used to be- lies before my eyes...The anger... it's flooding my veins...I want to find the bastards who dared to kill her...I'm running down the corridors, Merin following my lead, his staff banging against the coal-blackened walls. I turn a sharp corner, a pool of molten rock sizzling in the corner of the dark room, filling it with infernal light. Merin pants- he was never strong...isn't that odd? I used 'was'? This-this is only a memory, isn't it? It's true--what that voice has been whispering in my head--I'm going mad. But why must I suffer this torture? I performed an act of Good, didn't I? Getting rid of that bastard Diablo was Heaven's will.

Wasn't it?

Ah, the voice begins to whisper--it's saying that I'm damned. Damned not for the service I gave, but for my companions' deaths...I remember how Lazarus cut Merin down with a lightning bolt--through his chest. The blood. even hotter from the lightning, splattered across my face and arms, but I didn't notice. I watched Merin fall, his uncanny blue eyes widening in shock as his hand grazed the hole in his black skin where his heart beat a moment before. He fell then with one last grin at me-

"L-luck." He sputtered with a rambling, dying tongue before falling down to the floor.

I made Lazarus pay. Oh , yes...I did...I cut him apart, piece by piece.

He laughed.

I can hear him now...Shut up, you goddamned bastard! Shut up, do you hear me? SHUT UP!

No...it's that voice again, isn't it? That one...the one that's haunted me since I took that pulsing stone from the dead prince's body--poor child that he was-- and punctured my own forehead with it...Why? I still don't know...It was as if...I couldn't help myself. Yes, it was compelling my will somehow...what will I had left.

Now? I have none. No will to eat or sleep...my body does that for me. I find sometimes...that some of my thoughts are not my own...thoughts of distant deserts and heated jungles...I have memories of steam rising from golden sand as an enormous and fiery sun beats down upon my back. I know the scent of rotting foliage and mildew, warm with the gases of the stagnant rivers where leeches thrive upon rats' blood.

I have no idea where these memories came from. I don't think I've been to a desert...I know I haven't. These memories are flashes, though...nothing more. How do I know they are memories? Simple. They are so real in my mind...yet hazy...and mixed with these new memories are old feelings of fear, hatred and consuming fury...Ever since I crawled out of that hellish maze...days, weeks or months ago...I have had these memories and emotions...but they are not mine.

They are something else...perhaps madness.

I have no rest now- whatever this madness is, it will not let me be. The whisper again...it says I'm mad...and that I'm damned...but I'm never alone...

Never alone?

How can this be? I know I should be sleeping this moment...it is the dead of night, when even the crickets and cicadas dare not make a sound. It was around this time where I crawled out of the labyrinth, bleeding from a thousand wounds, the dead prince's crown in my hands. I handed that old man--Cain?--the crown and silently walked away. The voice was there even then, I think. I close my eyes and scenes of desert wind and misty marshes cloud my senses. I can never will myself to wake up from these dreams--they are like a vision that is forced upon me... Wait! There! That whisper! What does...what is it...what does it want?

Ah, now I see. I see. I see what I have done, my sheer idiocy and foolishness that sprang from my anger...days ago...when I wandered into the deepest pit of that Monastery.

When I climbed onto that pentagram.

And challenged the Lord of Terror.

Oh, mighty Seraphim...what have I done?

Please forgive me.

I must go.

I must go where the voice wants me to.

It will force me to madness if I don't...you understand, don't you? A life of madness--with Him inside me--will only come to the deaths of others.

The voice is laughing again...Stop it, you bastard! Now it's...cajoling, the voice...I witness a man bound to a large stone in the center of a fiery chamber, silvery blue runes against the stone and his chains...I see closer...

Good Gods.

It's not a man...what is it...god, what IS it!

What? Who is he?

_Brother._ My brother. Yes, now I remember him...of course I do...

No! I don't...I don't have one... I'm incurably mad now, aren't I?

I will go tomorrow. Away from Tristram and the Khanduras...away from the monastery's ruin...

I will go East.

_**-"...One day he simply left. Soon thereafter, Tristram was attacked by legions of foul demons..."-**_

**-END**

_A/N R&R please! Flamers will be burned alive._


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